Inventing the Future

The Media Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is
housed in a stark I.M. Pei-designed building that seems to say,
"Serious things go on here.'' Its surface, composed of hundreds of
large gray squares, is severe, almost uninviting. In his book The Media
Lab: Inventing the Future at M.I.T., Stewart Brand likened the
structure to "a modern appliance.''

Inside, however, a mural by the artist Kenneth Noland sets a more playful tone. Covering an entire wall of the building's five-story, sun-filled atrium, the mural is a simple geometric composition: horizontal bands of bright, whimsical colors--pink, red, yellow, green, orange, purple, and blue--on a gray grid.

Serious things do go on at the Media Lab, but a sense of play seems
to pervade the place.

Opened with much fanfare in 1985, the Cambridge, Mass., lab is an
interdisciplinary research facility whose mission is to "invent the
future,'' specifically the future of communication technologies.
Scientists and graduate students work behind doors that say such things
as "Television of Tomorrow,'' "Spatial Imaging,'' "Movies of the
Future,'' and "The Virtual Acoustic Room.'' If it sounds a bit like a
playground for cyberpunks and techno-nerds, well, it is--but it's a
playground that has attracted the financial backing of hundreds of big
corporations, including International Business Machines, Apple, Sony,
Polaroid, Schlumberger, Nintendo, General Motors, and Dow Jones.

In a section of the Media Lab called "Learning and Common Sense,''
Seymour Papert is trying to invent the future of school. A rumpled man
with an unruly gray beard and a mischievous sparkle in his eyes,
Papert, 65, is the director of the Media Lab's Epistemology and
Learning Group. Born and raised in South Africa, trained in mathematics, Papert studied for five years in Switzerland with the renowned philosopher and psychologist Jean Piaget before taking a job, in 1964, at M.I.T., where he quickly made a name for himself in the burgeoning field of artificial intelligence.

Papert is best known as the creator of Logo, the first computer-programming language designed as a learning tool for children.
But he is also something of an education guru--and a vocal critic of the institution of School (with a capital S). His provocative ideas on
education and technology can be found in his two books, Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas and The Children's Machine:
Rethinking School in the Age of the Computer (both published by Basic Books).

Sitting in a low, stuffed chair in his third-floor office, Papert speaks in a voice not much louder than a whisper, but he doesn't mince
words. "I think School is bad,'' he says. "And it's as bad for teachers as it is for kids.''

'Yearners' vs. Establishment

Papert poses this question: Why is it that "megachange'' has
occurred in such fields as telecommunications, medicine, entertainment,
and transportation, yet the modern elementary school classroom has
evolved very little since the early part of the century? "The education
establishment,'' Papert says, "including most of its research
community, remains largely committed to the educational philosophy of
the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and so far none of those who
challenge these hallowed traditions has been able to loosen the hold of
the educational establishment on how children are taught.''

Yet many people--teachers, parents, and students--are fed up with the system. And these "Yearners,'' as Papert calls them, increasingly are showing their disenchantment with School.

"Many individual Yearners,'' he writes, "simply find ways to get
around School, particularly when they find School's problems directly
constraining their aspirations for their own children.'' Some parents,
for example, choose to teach their children at home, while others seek
out alternative schools. And many teachers "manage to create within the
walls of their own classrooms oases of learning profoundly at odds with
the education philosophy publicly espoused by their administrators.''

School, however, remains firmly in place. "It's deeply rooted,'' Papert says, "but in order to get away from it, we have to get out of
this idea that's been so thoroughly internalized, that this is the 'natural way' for learning. 'Schoolers' are people who accept that.''

Papert argues that there's nothing natural about School at all:
"Quite the contrary: The institution of School, with its daily lesson
plans, fixed curriculum, standardized tests, and other such
paraphernalia, tends constantly to reduce learning to a series of
technical acts and the teacher to the role of a technician.''

'Subversive' Computers

To make things worse, School's response to anything truly
revolutionary is to appropriate it rather than accept it on its own
terms. Which is why Papert believes that most attempts at school reform
are doomed from the start.

Take computers. Why have they failed to revolutionize schools in the
way that they have revolutionized other parts of our lives? Isn't that
what educators envisioned in the 1970's?

What happened, Papert says, is that School took the computer and
"turned it into a support for the status quo rather than an instrument
for change. It's very striking that, in 1980, when there were very few
personal computers around, whenever one saw one, 90 percent of the time
it was in the hands of a visionary teacher who was really trying to use
this thing, to do something with it. But in the 80's, the school
administrators got into the act, shoving them off into computer
labs.''

"In the end, I think computers are inherently subversive,'' he says,
"even though they are captured by the system and tamed. But the
potential is still there for them to be used in other ways.''

Papert the critic gives way to Papert the utopian: "In my vision,
the child programs the computer and, in doing so, both acquires a sense
of mastery over a piece of the most modern and powerful technology and
establishes an intimate contact with some of the deepest ideas from
science, from mathematics, and from the art of intellectual
model-building.''

Self-Directed Learning

The computer as a subversive instrument--that's what Papert had in
mind when he created Logo in the 1960's. Inspired by Piaget's notion
that children build their own intellectual structures--for example,
children learn many things, such as how to talk, without actually being
"taught''--Papert set out to create a computer program that could be
used by children for self-directed learning.

Computers, Papert says in The Children's Machine, "should serve
children as instruments to work with and to think with, as the means to
carry out projects, the source of concepts to think new ideas. The last
thing in the world I wanted or needed was a drill-and-practice program
telling me to do this sum next or spell that word! Why should we impose
such a thing on children?''

What Papert and his colleagues at M.I.T.'s Artificial Intelligence
Group (the forerunner to the Media Lab) came up with has been modified
many times since 1967, when it first appeared, but the basic elements
of Logo remain unchanged. By typing simple commands on a keyboard,
children can direct a screen "turtle'' to move in any direction; the
turtle's path becomes a line, thus allowing the user to create an
infinite variety of geometric shapes. For example, a square can be
drawn by using the following commands:

Children who use Logo learn the language of geometry not by
memorizing facts and figures but by creating their own images. Papert
calls this "Turtle Geometry.''

"Since learning to control the Turtle is like learning to speak a
language, it mobilizes the child's expertise and pleasure in
speaking,'' Papert explains. "Since it is like being in command, it
mobilizes the child's expertise and pleasure in commanding. ... Working
with the Turtle mobilizes the child's expertise and pleasure in motion.
It draws on the child's well-established knowledge of 'body geometry'
as a starting point for the development of bridges into formal
geometry.''

Serious Work

In the world of Logo, the teacher becomes more of a guide, a
"debugger,'' than a dispenser of knowledge. "The Logo teacher,'' Papert
writes, "will answer questions, provide help if asked, and sometimes
sit down next to a student and say: 'Let me show you something.' What
is shown is not dictated by a set syllabus.''

Logo students "start interacting mathematically because the product
of their mathematical work belongs to them and belongs to real life,''
he explains. "Part of the fun is sharing, posting graphics on the
walls, modifying and experimenting with each other's work, and bringing
the 'new' products back to the original inventors.''

Children in a Logo classroom, Papert says, have the sense that they
are doing something consequential. "Unlike in the arithmetic class,''
he asserts, "where they know that the sums they are doing are just
exercises, here they can take their work seriously. If they have just
produced a circle by commanding the Turtle to take a long series of
short forward steps and small right turns, they are prepared to argue
with a teacher that a circle is really a polygon. No one who has
overheard such a discussion in 5th-grade Logo classes walks away
without being impressed by the idea that the truth or falsity of theory
is secondary to what it contributes to learning.''

Michael Tempel, the president of the nonprofit Logo Foundation,
estimates that some form of Logo is available in about half the schools
in the United States. The latest version, called Micro-Worlds, has
received positive reviews in the electronic-learning press. Yet many
schools continue to use the computer merely as an extension of the
traditional "transmission model'' of teaching, effectively turning
powerful machines into nothing more than expensive flash cards.

Empowered by Video Games

To Papert, it's no surprise that computer-aided instruction, or
C.A.I., has failed to impress students.

He offers this anecdote: "I was observing a child working with a
C.A.I. program for multiplication. There was something strange going
on. I had seen the child do several multiplications quickly and
accurately. Then I saw him give a series of wrong answers to easier
problems. It took me a while to realize that the child had become bored
with the program and was having a better time playing a game of his own
invention. The game required some thinking. It redefined the 'correct'
answer to the computer's questions as the answer that would generate
the most computer activity when the program spewed out explanations of
the 'mistake.'''

Video games, on the other hand, offer a glimpse at the power
computers have to transform the way children learn. Papert urges
parents to try to understand what it is about these games that so
captivates their children.

"Any adult who thinks one of these games is easy need only sit down
and try to master one,'' he writes. "Most are hard, with complex
information--as well as technique--to be mastered.'' Video games
empower children "to test out ideas about working within prefixed rules
and structures in a way few other toys are capable of doing'' and
"teach children what computers are beginning to teach adults--that some
forms of learning are fast-paced, immensely compelling, and
rewarding.''

Papert has been criticized for taking video games seriously--and for
soliciting a $3 million grant from Nintendo to develop learning tools
that look and feel more like video games than schoolbooks. The
three-year project ended last year, but Papert makes no apologies for
it. "Change in education isn't just going to come from ivory-tower
academics,'' he says. "It's going to come from all sectors; academia,
yes, but also from industry, from toy makers--that's part of the
culture of children.''

Logo Meets LEGO

Papert's most fruitful relationship has been with LEGO, the Danish
toy company known for its colorful, interlocking plastic bricks. Since
1989, Papert has held the unlikely title of "LEGO Professor of Learning
Research,'' a designation that seems to amuse him to no end. Asked
about the title, Papert grins from ear to ear, jumps out of his seat,
and grabs what he calls the "LEGO Chair''--a small throne made entirely
of LEGO pieces and embellished with rotating LEGO turtles. A gift from
the company, it represents Papert's attempt to break down the barriers
between school and play.

In the mid-1980's, Papert was looking for a way to match Logo with
real-world objects. "Children love constructing things,'' Papert
reasoned, "so let's choose a construction set and add to it whatever is
needed for them to make cybernetic models.'' LEGO--one of the few toys
left that allow kids to create objects of their own design--seemed the
perfect building material for such an endeavor, so Papert pitched the
idea to the company. "And that turned out to be the start of a good
relationship,'' Papert says.

The result was LEGO-Logo, which Papert and his colleagues
fieldtested at James Hennigan Elementary School, an inner-city public
school in Boston's Jamaica Plain neighborhood that has long been
associated with the Media Lab. There, 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders used
the Logo software and the LEGO building blocks--along with a variety of
motors, sensors, and gears--to create small robotic objects: pop-up
toasters, carnival rides, cars, and trucks. One student built a house
with lights that turned on automatically after dark.

LEGO began marketing LEGO-Logo in 1988, and it is now used in
thousands of classrooms across the country. But Papert believes the
learning tool can be improved. Currently, LEGO-Logo objects are
connected to computer equipment via standard electrical wires, which
limits their mobility. Papert would like to see the system become more
portable.

For several years, one of his graduate students, 26-year-old Randy
Sargent, has been working on a remote-control version of LEGO-Logo. In
the LEGO-Logo Lab--a cramped room full of Apple computers, bins of LEGO
bricks, and assorted tools--Sargent holds a gray box, about the size of
a cigarette pack. Stuffed with sophisticated electronics, it will make
the remote-control version of LEGO-Logo possible. (Fieldtesting of the
new version will begin in the spring.)

Sargent, a self-described "nerd'' who as a child always was building
things with LEGO (although never in school), seems like a kid in a
candy shop as he shows off one of his creations--a six-legged LEGO
"walker'' that moves back and forth in frantic motions. It looks like
something out of one of the "Star Wars'' movies. "I would say my three
really big interests are education, computers, and LEGO,'' Sargent
says. "And here they are, all three of them. I'm completely amazed that
I can spend all my time doing this.''

Project Headlight

Gilda Keefe teaches a class of bilingual (English and Spanish) 4th
graders at Hennigan Elementary School. She managed to get through
Mindstorms, although she admits that she "didn't understand it very
well.'' And she hasn't read The Children's Machine, Papert's most
recent book. Yet Papert has had a significant influence on her life as
a teacher.

When Keefe began teaching at Hennigan six years ago, the school was
two years into Project Headlight, an attempt to incorporate some of
Papert's ideas about computers and learning into a school environment.
About 250 students--one-third of the school population--in grades 2
through 5 take part in the project, which is a collaborative effort of
the Media Lab, I.B.M., and the Boston public schools.

Each student in Project Headlight spends at least 45 minutes a day
working on one of 125 I.B.M. personal computers, which are equipped
with a Logo-based software program called LogoWriter. Most of the
computers are grouped in two large circles in a common area outside the
regular classrooms.

Teachers in the project have a great deal of freedom in deciding how
they want to use the computers. Keefe, for instance, uses Logo for
"Turtle Geometry,'' but she also uses the software for an
interdisciplinary telecommunications project that links her 4th graders
with students in other countries.

For a study of bird migration, Keefe presented her students with a
list of birds that migrate from Massachusetts to Costa Rica. Each
student then selected a bird, researched it, and shared the information
with the rest of the class. Then they used the LogoWriter software to
draw pictures of their birds. Using a modem, the students sent video
images of their drawings to electronic pen pals in Costa Rica.
Meanwhile, the Costa Rican students, who had been working on the same
project, transmitted their own drawings to their North American
friends.

No More 'Fake' Exercises

Keefe sees many benefits to teaching with telecommunications. For
one thing, by allowing her students to carry on conversations with
Spanish-speaking children in another country, such projects give her
own students an important sense of validation and self-worth. And, of
course, they show that distant countries are filled with living,
breathing people.

"I think Dr. Papert has terrific ideas,'' Keefe says. "I like his
philosophy a lot. Since I started teaching at Hennigan, I've really
thought a lot about how I teach. My role has changed. I've become a
learner along with my students. We're both part of the learning
process. I'm not like a traditional teacher--the one with all the
knowledge.''

Papert's ideas about the benefits of video games are the basis for
another project at Hennigan, called "Children as Designers.'' In the
project, which is led by Yasmin Kafai, a postdoctoral fellow at the
Media Lab, 5th-grade students spend four to six months creating video
games that teach about fractions. Using the LogoWriter software, the
students design their games in whatever manner they choose. Many, of
course, base their games on ones they are familiar with, such as
Nintendo, but some make up their own. One girl, for example, based her
game on several Greek myths.

As part of her dissertation, Kafai compared the 5th graders with students who learned about fractions in a more traditional manner.

"We found that there was a significant improvement for the children
participating in these design activities,'' she says, "not only in the
learning of mathematics--even though we did not have any particular
'instruction'--but also in terms of programming. So our main argument
is that if you want to talk about computers in school, you have to move
away from these fake little exercises, and you have to find projects where kids really become programmers and designers.''

"You can capitalize on the interest children have in video games,''
Kafai says, "and turn it into something productive, into a rich learning experience.''

Diverse Users--and Uses

Project Headlight isn't the only place where Seymour Papert is
making a mark. Although few schools use Logo to the degree that
Hennigan Elementary does, many have incorporated the software into
their regular curricula, and Logo seems to have developed a loyal
following in the United States and abroad.

Logo users' groups meet regularly, and Logo conferences have been
held in such far-flung places as Greece, Australia, Costa Rica, and
Venezuela. Since last spring, the Logo Foundation has published a
newsletter, Logo Update, that features a front-page column written by
Papert. (In the first issue, he wrote: "I am sometimes introduced as
'the father of Logo.' The aspect of parenthood of which I am really
proud is not conceiving the idea in the first place but staying with
Logo and participating supportively in its development--as a father should.'')

Because of Logo's open-ended nature, how it's actually used in
schools is hard to track. Both Papert and Michael Tempel of the Logo
Foundation admit that some teachers and districts use Logo in ways that
run counter to its intended spirit. Tempel says he once visited a
classroom in which a teacher was trying to use Logo to teach her
students a rigid geometry curriculum. She wanted her students to create
specific geometric shapes on their computer screens. But because Logo
doesn't say "Wrong Answer'' if a student types in a "wrong'' command,
some students ended up producing different, unexpected objects.

"Logo,'' Tempel points out, "is always creating something, and that
something often turns out to be more interesting than the 'right' answer.''

MicroWorlds

Ironically, the latest version of Logo, MicroWorlds, contains some
nonprogramming elements, which Logo purists have objected to. Designed
(with Papert's help) and marketed by Logo Computers Systems Inc. of
Canada, MicroWorlds Math Links, MicroWorlds Language Art, and
MicroWorlds Project Builder allow students in grades 4 through 8 to use
text, color graphics, sound, and animation to create their own projects.

Kids using MicroWorlds Language Art, for example, can write poems,
greeting cards, and advertisements and then enhance their creations
with sound and graphics. Electronic Learning magazine called
MicroWorlds Language Art a "wondrous toolbox. ... The spectacular
effects created with MicroWorlds are not meant to simply add glitz to a
project. Students are encouraged to use these tools to communicate
meaning, to deepen their understanding of language, and to discover
creative ways to express their ideas.''

Ihor Charischak, the president of the Council for Logo in
Mathematics Education, sees MicroWorlds as Logo's attempt to compete
with some of the more popular multimedia software programs, such as
Apple's HyperCard. (See Education Week, March 29, 1989.) "Programming
is very important,'' he says, "but some of the newer applications are
more connected with the real world.''

Papert estimates that only 1,000 schools use Logo in a way that is
"significant for the learning experience of the children,'' a fact that
used to bother him. Now he seems more philosophical about it. "What's
happening is the understandable process,'' he says. Misuses of Logo, he
says, can be seen as windows on how School operates.

The whole-language approach to reading instruction, which has much
in common with the Logo philosophy, has suffered a similar fate, Papert
suggests. "There's been a critique of School for a long time,'' he
says. "I think Logo expresses that critique in a new form. I think
whole language is a very good idea that captures an aspect of that same
critique. I think in both cases they are a revival of a subversive
idea. And the response of School has been to neutralize them. But most
of what I see being done under the banner of whole language is better
than doing nothing.''

A Call for 'Little Schools'

In Mindstorms, Papert the utopian writes: "I believe that the
computer presence will enable us to so modify the learning environment
outside the classrooms that much if not all the knowledge schools
presently try to teach with such pain and expense and such limited
success will be learned without organized instruction. This obviously
implies that schools as we know them today will have no place in the
future.''

Then, he adds: "But it is an open question whether [schools] will adapt by transforming themselves into something new or wither away and be replaced.''

Now, 13 years after Mindstorms appeared, Papert seems ambivalent about the fate of School--and about his role in whatever transformation may occur. On the one hand, he is sympathetic toward those who choose to give up on the institution altogether, such as home schoolers. "I see [home schooling] as a positive thing,'' he says. "It's a reflection of the growing perception that School isn't O.K., that it isn't necessary.'' Yet Papert is also committed to changing the system from within, as he and his colleagues are trying to do at Hennigan Elementary School.

In the concluding chapter of The Children's Machine, titled "What Can Be Done?,'' Papert urges parents and teachers who share his vision of the future to go even further: Abandon the system and form their own "little schools.''

"A central feature of the little-school idea,'' he writes, "is that it permits a group of like-minded people--teachers, parents, and children--to act together on the basis of authentic personal beliefs. Instead of imposing a common way of thinking on everyone, it allows people with a shared way of thinking to come together.''

"My point is simply that a very new opportunity exists for mobilizing a larger public in pursuit of educational change,'' he argues. "And it seems to me very clear that a dynamic little school that is itself based on a principled stand on the connecting issues is in a much better position to do this than a cumbersome traditional school.''

In other words, a megachange in education will surely come--but why sit around waiting for it to arrive if it can be hastened along? Why should teachers who seek radical change beat their heads against the wall of School if they can create alternatives?

"If you don't try to make things better,'' Papert says, "you can be sure they will turn out worse.''

Vol. 13, Issue 16, Pages 36-39

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